In Milo Rigaud’s Secrets of Voodoo he describes the les lois ‘the laws’ as intermediaries between human beings and the cosmic source. These unseen constitutional agents are waves known as Loas who superintend the pattern of the world. During ritual and geometric drumming initiates tune into a loa and a transmission ‘mounts’ a recipient, known as ‘cheval’ which means horse. From the outside the person is possessed or entranced-from the word entrance. Similar to an artist being a cheval ridden by inspiration (in spirit).The psychic transit arrives, stays and expires while vertical lines are cross bounded by horizontal lines producing a square (or diamond) that channels (even generates) cosmic awareness into a personal experience.
The psychic map contained within the veve’s is a cross road of any place, it is also at the same time a quantum world of everywhere. I do not practice Voodoo or any religion in a traditional process. What I notice about active practitioners in Voodoo is trance states and a deep relationship with inspiration.
Excessive emphasis on power points and direction makes space magical and useful. Realistically on a mundane level, lines retain power in structure, a sentence of words or even numbers counting paced events on a clock. The Veves in voodoo reflect such effects as points and lines being the living representation of a spirit who is a geometric being. This is not unlike other cosmograms using geometry, including the Sri Yantra, Kolams and Navajo sand painting to mention a few.
Health, abundance, growth and love are all recognized universally as good and beneficial directions for the best outcomes. Positive end results, efficiency, a management of temporal lobe quakes and a thriving neural network are in accordance to the patterns of Loas. It cannot be argued maintaining this pattern is essential to balance and living well. Magic’s best purpose is healing and restoring the incomplete.
Points and lines (or particles and waves) will appear serpentine. The serpent is an expression of a time tense, a movement of a day and night in space. Only a focusing meditating point can open an omnivoyant eye in the center square (or center diamond). Veve’s along with the crafted tiles made by Islamic artisans have fixed these particles and waves in a suspended state for us to study the hidden qualities of an interior state. In my limited personal experience spirits look more like unfolding flowers without interruption, then they look like replicas of people.
I intentionally borrow from authentic beliefs. I mimetically blend ideas together. My intention is not to marginalize the value of traditional Voodoo
The search for a mind treasure in the past relied on the astrological map of archetypes. This cross was emblemized into the tetramorph, a visual arrangement of four things.
In this artistic dramatization Aquarius is an agent of sapience directing itself as it’s own magnetic force. Taurus, Leo, Scorpio create a ladder of finer and finer interior triangles.
Taurus representing stability while channeling creativity between parallel lines beyond personality.
Leo directs it’s energy into a series of actions to deliver a flower or design to the world.
Scorpio are the lines drawn by the tool and is the evolving, crawling, flying spine.
These substances-earth, fire and water, create a closed triangle of electric currents, a ladder or chain of triangles.
The Aquarian mind refines all turbulent magnetic forces within one’s self Having been a floating needle lost in a circle, the tetramorph becomes a conscious map. Aquarius aims to manage gravity and balance the triangles like an egg standing on a level surface.
The ladder of triangles are steps to further our own development towards inner realization. The ladder becomes a hyper reflective yantra, a sort of inward escalator. With every step, the chain of being changes on all levels. Novelty and invention grow out of either end. The ladder is a link like a potter spinning a pot on a wheel that aligns with the Earth’s magnetic field in a beautiful way. A process where the potter manifests a copy of a form broadcasted from a heavenly pattern
every once in a while I enjoy experimenting with different concepts and design. here’s an avant garde chain mail style, copper enamel pendent. I like the way M’Chigeeng First Nation artist, Duncan Neganigwane Pheasant describes a special frame of mind as a Hall of Creation. everybody walks through two beams of structure and flexibility. these are qualities in every person to find and to build an interior temple or House of Invention within themselves. The ceiling is the sky while the floor board is a cross current of tiles, each representing a space on a calendar. in the center is a mercurial self with multiple layers of tissue that always change. a surface identity is contained inside a beaker but also a guiding star that links to genius, a birds eye view. universally an attentive path leads to the best, the good. this quality of being honest shares a sense of well being with others. these are the thoughts behind the design and intention of this pendent.
The Ancient Egyptian Ka is an expression of vital essence, a force rising from a place that can not be explained. I haven’t found any strict definition of Ka but it is similar to the word soul. Many sources explain that the hieroglyph that display two arms are symbolic of molding pottery on a potters wheel.
The Ka
My first impression of Ka is energy. Another translation, based partly on the educated guesses of Julian Jaynes in his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind mentions qualities of conscious related to autoscopy. This idea of Ka as a double isn’t significantly supported when cross examined but there are some credible details to consider temporarily.
The autoscopic narrative suggests reflection is a kind of illusionary duplication, a way of putting one’s self into an object For example the Tutankhamun sarcophagus is a vivid copy of the pharaoh’s Ka or soul. To me it seems valid to consider Ka a universal signature that represents a forms presence fully. That sense of residence and memory survives the limits of the original. In this case and many others, the forgery is a decoy that influences our subconscious more powerfully than the original source.
Norval Morrisseau from Norval Morrisseau: Shaman Artist.National Gallery of Canada; First Edition (January 1, 2006)
Ojibway artist, Norval Morrisseau talked about The House of Invention. He never explained what the House was dogmatically. The meaning I found in what Morrisseau was talking about was the House was a flash of instantaneous possibilities.
Rarely we receive a glimpse of light from The House of Invention unless it’s in our dreams. My personal experience was an astral dream where my future self (Visual Spatial perspective) was touring the House of Invention. All the art was holographic and animated in a sequence of a fluid loops. It was comparable to the graphics interchange format but without any tics, fully three dimensional while suspended in space.
Plato also mentions a House of Invention he called hyperuranion, a place were all the forms live.
Jupiter in Vedic astrology is Guru, otherwise known as an auspicious teacher of light or in old fashion terms, simply- lord of light. This the embodiment of the silhouette ventriloquized by light in the painting. How we talk to ourselves influences our smallest self at an atomic level. The effects of Jupiter widens, extends and liberates space between lines. The planet’s influence causes us to to see things clearly without mistake. Jupiter is benevolent, helpful and fatherly. It has everything and doesn’t need anything. With it’s massive weight it moves obstacles effortlessly. Jupiter rules the 9th house of theurgy, learning, spirituality and awareness of reality.
Painting is a séance with one’s self, it’s a mediumship that dowses for pathways in the collective unconsciousness. All my writing is speculation, observational study and a visualization exercise in words.
Sefkhet-Abwy is Djehuty’s counterpart. Djehuty being commonly referred to by the Greek name Thoth, the ibis headed or beaker moon god. It is unclear how Sefkhet-Abwy fits in the triangularly with Ma’at, who is Djehuty’s actual wife but this is how it is recorded c. 3150 – c. 2613 BCE. Regardless both Djehuty and Sefkhet-Abwy were responsible for weight and measure. It is paramount to notice a woman as an accountant for the passing days. The proof being menstruation is based on a cycle.
Merkhet an astronomical timekeeping instrument
I found Sefkhet-Abwy was also called the Mistress of the House of Architects. This would be noteworthy to understand and explore metaphorically. Symbolically Sefkhet-Abwy’s use of a cord functioned umbilically to connect sacred alignments while surveying land. This cord was knotted to create a measuring rope used in the Stretching the Cord ceremony. Part of the ceremony was finding a square in space.
Stretching the Cord ceremony
There is so much to write about the meaning of the Stretching the Cord ceremony but I’ll reserve it. I recommend the reader look more into these things. The compass rose, geometry and even ornithomancy as flight patterns become more meaningful.
A Surveying Groma. A tool used to find a square in space
The name Sefkhet-Abwy which means either seven-horned or Safekh-Aubi she who wears horns, horns being plural without specific number. Relying on the reliefs, there are seven horns and a long horn creating eight. There is also an arch U-shaped indentation that encases the bone star design
The bovine horn (antler) theme and the bow can easily flow into the crescent moon symbol, both for agriculture and hunting purposes. There is also a leopard skin worn by Sefkhet-Abwy that represents the universal sky with the spots being points. If we travel 3,057 miles east from Egypt (on land) we can find the Hindu deity, Shiva who also has a moon crescent on his forehead and leopard skin. Shiva hangs out with cattle too
Star of Lakshmi and eight moon phases. The number Seven can escort us into all sorts of associative meanings. One being a version of the menorah whose limit at the time would stop at Saturn and the seven seas. Another being the period of seven days.
Maybe the gravity of the moon and earth help influence the framework of collagen and calcium phosphate. My impression of the horns led me to believe the ossification of cattle horns may have had some kind of relationship with the eight phases of the moon.
The Tantra is a special connection (fusion) with a deity or geometric symbol. Meditating on this double generates a navigating map towards a sapient future self. This is traditionally similar to a Yidam in Tibetan Buddhism.
I was inspired by Chögyam Trungpa’s book The Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness and the metaphor of the Star in the Tarot. Tantra means weaving and is about a relationship between the projector and the projected (or programmer and program) The woman in the painting is a personal interpretation of Tara, the mother of liberation.
from my personal Tarot symbolique et maçonnique by Jean Beauchard. The Star card with it’s twin geometric blueprint below the surface of the image.
from a French Freemason Lodge
“The Star, still called pentagram, represents for the Pythagoreans, the radiant initiate. Indeed for a long time, we represent a man, arms and legs apart, registered in the Star. His five points are thus attributed to the five extremities of the man whose head occupies the summit. She can register in a circle. It is no longer about the man inscribed in the matter, but about the man who has straightened up, who has reached his Star.”
étoile flamboyante: Love when it is sufficiently intense, is source of light and knowledge, in this respect we can say that the blaze associates with the star is Love.
“If we manage to register in the Flaming Star, to use this magnificent template which is offered to us we will have, found our balance, realized our own unit and we will have found this spark of divinity in us which will allow us to blaze. The Star, under the Delta, receives its influence as it receives that of the Sun and the Moon. She is the Great Architect of the Universe in Man in general and in the companion in particular. It blazes in addition to the radiation of the Delta, it completes the Knowledge by Love.”
Mitchell Pluto 